The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a milestone in U.S.-Israel cooperation on clean energy technology. With financial support of DOE and the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructures, the bilateral BIRD Foundation Energy Executive Committee has selected four cooperative clean energy projects in the United States and Israel. This initiative will award up to $3.3 million in U.S.-Israel funding for these four projects.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced more than $18 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support small business innovation research, development, and deployment of clean energy technologies. In this first phase of funding, 125 grants of up to $150,000 each will be awarded to 107 small advanced technology firms across the United States.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program is hosting two Webinars tomorrow, Wednesday, November 18. The first targets recipients of Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG), and the second targets state and local officials interested in the role of policy in renewable energy market development.
Steven Chu, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary has announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields as well as for research into advanced geothermal technologies. The newly announced grants will be awarded to 123 projects in 39 states and will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and non-Federal cost-share funds, for a total grant pool of $691 million. This is a pretty big number and represents a major investment in a promising and yet often overlooked renewable energy resource. Recipients of the new grant funding include private industry, academic institutions, tribal entities, local governments, and DOE’s National Laboratories.
This country’s 130 million homes together generate more than 20% of the nation’s carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions. This is one of the most significant contributing sources in the country to global warming. Existing techniques and technologies in energy efficiency retrofitting can reduce home energy use by up to 40 percent per home on average which would also lower our national greenhouse gas emissions by 160 million metric tons annually by the year 2020. In addition doing so would reduce home energy bills by $21 billion a year and over time these savings would more than pay for the high up-front costs for energy efficiency retrofitting.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced in Washington that the Department of Energy (DOE) will provide up to $750 million in new funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help accelerate the development of renewable energy generation projects. This funding will be targeted to cover the cost of loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and could support as much as $4 to 8 billion in lending to eligible projects, and the Department will invite private sector participation to accelerate the financing of these renewable energy projects.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Recovery Act – Local Energy Assurance Planning (LEAP) Initiative is offering grants to city or township governments for programs and initiatives that help them develop energy assurance and resilience plans. The deadline for application is 10/22/09 and awards will be in the range of $60,000 and $300,000.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced grant awards for up to $24 million, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to three university-led wind energy research facilities that have been selected to support university research and development programs to improve land-based and offshore wind turbine performance and reliability and to provide career educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students in wind energy technologies. The three universities are: Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Maine and University of Minnesota.
Seriously folks you read it right… fracking (an actual technical term for hydraulic fracturing) hot dry rock reservoirs has the potential to open up vast hot dry rock “heat” reservoirs for use as a reliable geothermal energy source. According to a 400 page MIT study The Future of Geothermal Energy sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and published in 2007 the economically recoverable potential for “Heat Mining” in the US could grow to a cumulative installed generating capacity of 100GW in less than fifty years.
